MD Read?

[Drake Smith]

Obviously much of M&D is a fabrication but does anyone know how correlated
it is to the history of the line and people?

On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 5:18 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> "... the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only
> instrument used upon a book.”
>
>
> > There are beautiful passages in GR and in AtD. M&D, though it is a
> > reflection of and a commentary on the values of the day that produced it,
> > is set when technology had not yet emerged as a hazardous concept (Leo
> > Marx). It is set in the days of instruments, of measuring devices used
> > to determine the present value of observations. We might use, as Mike
> > suggests, and as Nabokov once advised, the old instrument for
> > reading a book: our tingling spines.
> >
> > On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> "To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only
> to
> >> create, among the people one would rule, what we call...Bad History.
> Nothing
> >> will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a
> Line, in
> >> particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst
> of a
> >> People,--to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,--'tis the first
> >> stroke.--All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and
> Devastation."
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> When it seems there's a Chance that someone may listen, Mason and Dixon
> both
> >> try to explain about the new Planet,--but very few care. It breaks
> slowly
> >> upon the Astronomers, that with no time available for gazing at
> anything,
> >> this people's Indifference to the Night, and the Stars, must work no
> less
> >> decisively than their devotion to the Day, and the Earth for whose sake
> >> something far short of the Sky must ever claim them, a stove, a child, a
> >> hen-house predator, a deer upwind, the price of Corn, a thrown shoe, an
> >> early freeze.
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> There may be found, within the malodorous Grotto of the Selves, a
> conscious
> >> Denial of all that Reason holds true. Something that knows, unarguably
> as it
> >> knows Flesh is sooner or later Meat, that there are Beings who are not
> wise,
> >> or spiritually advanced, or indeed capable of Human kindness, but ever
> and
> >> implacably cruel, hiding, haunting, waiting,--known only to the
> >> blood-scented deserts of the Night,--and any who see them out of
> Disguise
> >> are instantly pursued,--and none escape, however long and fruitful be
> the
> >> years till the Shadow creeps 'cross the Sill-plate, its Advent how mute.
> >> Spheres of Darkness, Darkness impure,--Plexities of Honor and Sin we may
> >> never clearly sight, for when we venture near they fall silent,
> Murdering
> >> must be silent, by Potions and Spells, by summonings from beyond the
> >> Horizons, of Spirits who dwell a little over the Line between the Day
> and
> >> its annihilation, between the number'd and the unimagin'd,--between
> common
> >> safety and Ruin ever solitary...
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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